


Duramen

by telanaris



Series: Arcana One-Shots [8]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Future Spec, Optimism, fix-it for book ten, things are not as dire as they appear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-21 23:45:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14296056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telanaris/pseuds/telanaris
Summary: No matter what it takes. I promise.





	Duramen

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for book 10 ahead.

_I want a future with you. More than anything._

Julian’s words color everything that comes after them the way stained glass colors light: filtered and rich. Yet that hue does not feel like a deception, even after he has turned himself in—it feels like a higher truth.

In another time, in the life that no longer feels like her own, she would have spilled blood and snapped bone defending him from arrest: the willow would wilt under the noxious energy of curses and hexes, and the grass would be watered with the blood of the guards. _Paint the roses red, baby_. She can hardly remember that life, and the person she was then, but she knows this to be true: she would have fought with all the ferocity of a cornered animal before letting the guards carry Julian off.

But her amnesia has changed her; _Asra_ has changed her. She had resisted, with a newly found sense of self-control, the urge to deck Procurator Volta soundly in the face when she had appeared at the entrance to Lucio's chambers. Later, in the garden, she holds her tongue ( _bites the inside of her cheek ’til it swells_ ) as the palace guards roughly force Julian to his knees, and then lower, shoving his face into the mud, a knee on his back holding him down as they tie his hands.

Before they had seized him by his arms, before they had lifted him and carried him away, Julian had risked a second glance at her. How she had wanted to call out to him! To protest this injustice, the seizure of an innocent man and the roughness with which he was being treated. She had parted her lips, the words on the tip of her tongue—but Julian had shook his head, barely perceptible in the drama that was unfolding around them. _No._

Even the memory, fresh as it is, is enough to start her heart racing, but— _Concentrate on your breathing_. Asra has taught her patience. When she had woken up from a dreamless slumber, as helpless and empty as a newborn, it was Asra who had taught her to walk, to speak, to eat. It had taken time, and the first thing she had learned before succeeding in any of these things on her own (walking, speaking, eating) had been patience, of a calibre she had never before known.

But perhaps more important than all of those things, Asra has taught her to trust.

She loves Julian—she _trusts_ him. That is a greater kind of strength, she thinks, than the capacity for violence. And when he had stolen that last look at her in the garden, shook his head, his eyes had implored her: _trust me._

And this time… she does. This is different. Because when he had burst through the bushes and laid eyes on her and Portia… he had been relieved. It was not the way he had looked at her at the docks, all puffed-up with notions of sacrifice and sabotage. It had not been the look he would have given her if he thought it was the last time he was going to see her. No, this is _different;_ he had promised.

_I’ll find some way to make that happen, no matter what it takes. I promise._

She trusts him; she believes him. No matter what that foul pit concealed in its belly, the darkness into which he had descended and into which she could not follow, he will not break his promise. Not to her. Not now.

She remembers the way he had pushed past her, throwing his arms wide, “ _I, Julian Devorak, have come to turn myself in!”_ And she thinks of the bravado of a graceless fifteen year old, newly come into his height, raising his fists to ruffians to stop them from stealing from his family. He had not been alone, then; she  vows that he will not be alone now.

But leave Portia her shovel—Aredhel has other devices, other tools. Other weapons. 

She idly traces the oak leaves on her wrist. Of all the parts of the victorious Oak, it is the heartwood—the _duramen_ —that is the strongest. It is the heart of the tree that burns hottest and brightest, that crafts the strongest weapons and the most seaworthy vessels. It is the center, the core.

And at her core, now, is hope—trust. 

Duramen, durable—endure. She will endure this like an oak weathers winter, and her trust in him will shield her from the chill. No frost, no fear will touch her heart: she will be strong. _Duramen_. She moves her mouth soundlessly to the words like a sacred incantation. 

 _I’ll find some way to make that happen,_ he had said, but he need not do it alone. She will meet him halfway. There is a feeling within her, a secret in the ink that decorates around her wrists. There is... an old power in her. Reaching for it since she woke with her memories obliterated has proved impossible, like trying to hold water in her bare hands. But she thinks if the need arises she might finally be able to access it, draw upon those reservoirs. And if she can—if she does—than nothing, not Nadia nor her sisters nor her courtiers, will stop her from keeping Julian safe.

_No matter what it takes. I promise._

And when it is over, one way or the other—when Julian has escaped the gallows a second time, when he is once more a free man—she will part her lips for him. Out from the well of her throat she will pull a ring, carved from the wood of her heart, _duramen,_ and sanded to a smooth finish _._

“ _See_ ,” she will say, holding the ring out to him in her palm, “ _I never doubted you, not for a second. I believed in you,_ ” she will tell him, as she slips the ring upon his finger. “ _And now, my love, we will never again be parted._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed my writing, please consider following me on tumblr where I write as 4biddenleeches. :) Come chat with me about my favorite disaster doctor! And my prompt box is always open if there is something particular you’d like to see.


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